How far back into your childhood can your remember and what is your favorite memory of that time?
10.06.2025 13:49
Someone rightly commented below that the scrubbed table and tiled floor would have made a lot of work, but we did have a cleaning lady, a Mrs Trevor. The reason why I remember the kitchen table is because I also have a memory of Mrs Trevor being on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor, having parked me on the table to keep me out of the way and out of mischief.
I must be a toddler, and I'm sitting, as toddlers do, with my legs outstretched in front of me, feeling the ribbed surface of the scrubbed table on the back of my legs. In one hand I have a small chunk of lemon, in the other a little salt, and I'm alternately licking the salt and sucking the lemon. Below me, Mrs Trevor (whose hair is tied up in a headscarf) is looking up, and telling me what a peculiar child I am!
It's daytime, summer, and although the curtains on the window are closed, from the light around them and filtering through them, I can see that the sun is shining outside. It's my bedroom, and I'm in my bed, which must be a baby's cot. Outside my bedroom, the other side of the wall behind my head, I can hear footsteps coming up the wooden stairs.
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I remember our sitting room, the green-covered armchairs and the black and white television with the tiny screen. I remember our garden, and the scary geese at the bottom of the garden; I remember the muddy lane outside and the surrounding fields. I loved every inch of it.
That is all. My only clue to the time or the circumstances came from my mother, who died before I was 10. She mentioned once that I had measles just about the time of my first birthday, and that she'd always thought I caught measles from the doctor, because I hadn't been anywhere else where I could have done so.
I would go back in a heartbeat!
My very earliest memory appears to date from about the time of my first birthday.
We left that beautiful cottage two years later, and I miss it to this day. I remember the kitchen, with its scrubbed wooden table and its red-tiled floor, and the Aga cooking range that kept it warm all year round; my father had bought it from an old house, and rebuilt it in our kitchen. I discovered recently that it's still there, nearly 70 years after we left, and so are the tiles. Both must be well over 100 years old.
It's very clear, and can't possibly have been implanted in my mind by anyone else, because no-one else was there or would know about it. And it's definitely not a dream, but a clear memory.
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Well, my birthday is in August. The curtains would have been closed to protect my eyes, if I had measles. And the horrible pink stuff would have been calamine lotion, a kaolin-based remedy intended to soothe itchy spots. 70 years on, I still hate the smell of it!
I know those footsteps, and they belong to the doctor. I don't like the doctor, because every time he comes, he makes them cover me with that horrible pink stuff with the horrible smell, and I feel I can't breathe. There is nowhere I can go, so I burrow under my bedclothes.